[TheZee]

Ok people, I am tripping out on my battery stats that have changed dramatically within the last few months or so. Here's the scenario: I am running Mac OSX 10.2.8 Jaguar on a Snow White G3 iBook, 30GB HD, 612Mgb RAM and I have approximately 12.87GB available on my Hard Drive. Since the day I first purchased it (2003), I always worked with it plugged in and never used the battery for any period of time. A few months ago I attempted to use my iBook while on battery power alone only to find that my battery would ony last approximately 15- 25 minutes. Needless to say I was pissed and began looking to purchase a new battery. I was told by Apple and others that the battery only lasts around two years. I was pissed because I never used my iBook under battery power and then when I went to do so, for the first time, the battery was dust.

Here is the stumper:
Can anyone enlighten me on why, all of a sudden; I am talking as of yesterday, my battery is now showing a full charge status and allowing me to up to 1 hour 55 minutes of work time??? No joke people, it has gone from me having to keep my iBook constantly plugged in because if I disconnected the power, the battery would show a 15 minute charge and the battery charge indicator lights on the the battery itself would immediately begin blinking, indicating very low charge to the battery lights now showing all lights lit (full charge) and the battery charge indicator in my menubar showing that I have around 1:30 worth of time.
I apologize for the lengthy post here but I am flabbergasted and overjoyed, really. I simply would like to know what could have done this and how I can best maintain the capacity of the battery now. Is it advisable to completely discharge the battery before recharging it ??? Is there a patch or ??? that I should employ to help maintain the capacity ??? Does anyone have the slightest idea as to how this could have happened ??? I have installed all the security updates, of which on did include a battery fix and I utilize a third party application entitled "Capacity Meter" to check the stats of the battery. As of now, that app gives the following stats: Capacity= 1536/4600 Battery Status=Poor 33% Amperage 1016 Current 463 Voltage 14227.
Thanks for any and all guidance given people !!!

[frdmfghtr]

Try taking at look at this website: Welcome to Battery University

I'll sum up what I think, and you can read further.

Li-ion batteries age with time, regardless of use. Heat makes them age faster. The whole time that you THOUGHT you weren't causing wear in your battery, you actually were, by keeping it in a relatively warm place--your computer. They also tend to lose charge over time, so your iBook was keeping it topped off continuously; I bet it kicked the charger on when the battery got below about 94% of what it thought was the max charge and topped off the battery.

As far as the sudden extension of the runtime, what I speculate happened was that when you ran it down the first time, the battery calibrated itself and now reports more accurately the full charge capacity. What the internal circuitry THOUGHT was the capacity and what the battery's chemistry could actually support were so far off that it ended up in a very short first-time run (I don't know how exactly; this is speculation).

Doing a deep discharge of a Li-ion cell is NOT recommended as standard practice; it can be done once every 3-6 months or so (I make a practice of doing the deep discharge/calibration every 50 cycles or six months) but no more than that. The occasional trip to drain-land is OK, but don't do it every time.

There is no patch for it; battery chemistry doesn't give two hoots about software updates, so the only way you can get battery capacity back is to replace the battery.

[TheZee]

Dude,
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge with me and for hipping me to that "Battery University" site. It was very interesting and informative. I think I agree with your assessment of the situation. I just recently performed a deep discharge and recharge, something I don't think I have ever done with this machine. I am still getting about 1hour & 44 minutes on a full charge which is awesome compared the 15-25 minutes I was only getting before. How ever it happened I, for one, am psyched about it and I look forward to using the battery much more often. As a matter of fact I am running on battery power as I write this. AWESOME !!! Thanks again for all your help.
YOU ROCK!!!
Peace out . . .